[29] OYSTER CULTURE. 781 
grounds will be invaded only to supply vacancies in the breeding-basins, 
made in answer to the demands of the market. ‘The industry, moreover, 
far from being independent and distinct from the breeding of oysters, 
or of forming the basis of a special labor, is simply supplementary, and 
additional in that it increases the supply and the revenue without in- 
creasing the expense at the beginning. The breeding of mussels will 
also be considered in detail; for if their disappearance is not to be feared, 
there is such a vast difference between the sea-mussel and the mussel 
of the parks that the latter alone should be used for food, and this 
method of breeding enables a useful article of food to be grown upon 
bottoms whose nature is entirely incompatible with the production of 
oysters. In the following pages I shall only mention methods which 
have been sanctioned by long experience, dating back certainly for sev- 
eral centuries. I shall not entertain any theories or enter the domain 
of hypothesis, but remain faithful to the practical idea in which this book 
was conceived. 
METHODS OF BREEDING AND REARING OYSTERS, MUS- 
SELS, LOBSTERS, &c. 
CHAPTER I. 
INDUSTRY AND PRESENT METHODS. 
In the preceding pages we have said that the only methods described 
in this book would be such as had been sanctioned by centuries of ex- 
perience, and we now propose to prove that our assertion was not falsely 
made by describing in a few words the artificial breeding of oysters, 
taking as guides, if not as models, two examples: one, that of Lake 
Fusaro, which dates far back in the Christian era, and the other, that 
of Marennes, which began in the earlier times of our history. About 
the beginning of the seventh century a Roman knight, Sergius Orata, 
undertook the artificial breeding of oysters in the waters of Lake Lucrin, 
the Avern of poets. Historical documents prove incontestably the ex- 
istence of this establishment of oyster culture, and Pliny informs us 
that the enterprise was very successful, and its author in a short time 
became very rich. The methods followed, and probably invented, by 
Orata have been perpetuated to our day upon the banks of Lake Fusaro, 
a small salt-water lake, about a league in circumference, situated in 
the neighborhood of Cape Miséne, near the ruins of Cumes, which has 
been poetized by Virgil under the name of Achéron. Upon the blackish 
mud, which covers the volcanic soil of this basin to a depth of from one 
to two meters, the fishermen have constructed here and there artificial 
rockeries formed of rough stones gathered together and thrown into heaps 
sufficiently elevated to be protected from deposits of mud or slime. 
Upon these rocks oysters taken from the sea were deposited, to form an 
